Cat Playing Cupid (25 page)

H
AVING PRESSED
her last twenty into the waitress's hand, Lindsey slipped out through the restaurant's kitchen. Behind her, the plump, motherly server told Gibbs there'd been no woman in there matching that description. She said a man had been sitting at the recently vacated window table, that she hadn't seen the woman he described. That maybe she'd gone into one of the other restaurants along the row. Pausing in the hot, steamy kitchen, Lindsey heard enough to know he was arguing, that he didn't believe her. She spotted the back door and fled among a half dozen busy cooks who turned to scowl at her, never breaking their rhythm of frying and slicing and dishing up. The place smelled of steaming crab and hot fries. And she was out the door, on the side street where she slipped into a group of tourists.

She moved away with them, and ducked into a curio shop, was mingling with the dawdling customers, looking out, when she saw him leave the restaurant.

He headed in her direction. Stepping behind a big, bald man in a pink T-shirt, she looked for another way out of the shop and saw none. She waited until the clerk at the cash register turned away, and slipped past her into a dark little storeroom.

The small, dim space smelled of cheap scented candles. It was crowded with cartons stacked on the floor. The shelves behind these were piled with T-shirts, cheap pottery, piñatas, folded Japanese kites, and Mexican baskets. There was no back door, there was only the one way out of the closetlike space. She turned at a scuffing sound.

Gibbs stood blocking the door. She backed away. He grabbed her, spun her around, and shoved the gun in her stomach.

He wouldn't shoot her here, she thought, encumbered by the crowd in the shop, he'd never escape.

But then she thought about news stories in which the shooter had killed in a crowd, and run, knocking people aside, and had gotten away, with no armed officer to stop him. Gibbs shoved her so hard she twisted, lost her balance, and fell. He jerked her up, gripped her against him as he faced the door, his gun drawn.

Two uniformed officers filled the doorway.

Lindsey didn't wait, she elbowed him as hard as she could in the groin, and ducked down behind a stack of cartons. He turned the gun on her. There was a shot, and another. Gibbs staggered, dropped the gun, fell nearly on top of her. She was grabbed from behind and pulled away.

“For God's sake, Lindsey.” Mike held her close as an officer retrieved Gibbs's gun. Gibbs twisted, trying to get up. The other cop sent him sprawling again, and the two
officers, snapping cuffs on him, jerked him up and duck-walked him out through the now deserted shop. She could see more uniforms outside herding the tourists away. Leaning against Mike, needing his warmth, she saw Dallas come in from the street.

“You okay?” Dallas asked her.

“I am now,” she said shakily.

“You did good,” Mike said, tenderly touching her face.

“Ryder's dead,” she said woodenly.

Mike held her away, looked deep into her eyes, looked at the blood smeared across her tank top, Ryder's blood. She looked down at herself where she'd held her sister for an instant before Ryder went limp—before she turned and fled, to follow Gibbs, wanting to kill him.

What Ryder's life had been, and then her senseless death, only added to Lindsey's rage, to fury at herself that she'd done so little to change Ryder's life. Hiding her face against Mike's shoulder, she let him lead her out of the shop. She felt weak and hopeless, wanted only to be quiet, to be alone, just the two of them, Mike holding her close. Out on the street she stood within Mike's arms, oblivious to the cops and the staring tourists, stood in a world where there was no one else, where there was no cruelty, no murder, where there was only safety and love.

 

A
S
L
INDSEY CLUNG
within Mike's embrace, some miles away the gray tomcat felt equally safe in the secure embrace of Mike's daughter. The feel of Ryan's shoulder against which he lay, the clean smell of her hair against his
nose—and the fact that he was full of a burger and fries—filled Joe Grey with a deep sense of well-being. The team of Flannery and Damen was all right, the tomcat liked this new sense of belonging within a real family.

Where his relationship with Clyde had rocked along on good-natured male confrontation and wisecracking, Ryan added an amused tenderness that Joe hadn't known was missing, she added the gentle understanding that Clyde, too often, didn't like to exhibit.

Though back there in short-term parking, Clyde
had
stood up for him. Had laughed at the angry mother when she threatened to sue him, threatened to call the dogcatcher and have the cat quarantined—as if Joe had flayed that kid alive.

It was Ryan who'd retrieved the phone. Having double-parked her pickup behind the woman's white van, she'd glimpsed the phone on its roof and, hiding a grin, had put it in her pocket while Clyde fetched the first aid kit. And before Clyde fished out the bandages, she'd fetched her camera and taken pictures of Joe's minute claw marks in the kid's hand, and then of the pudgy mother doctoring the scratch and bandaging it. She made sure to photograph all aspects of both arms and hands, and of the child's face, to prove there were no other wounds.

“The cat didn't bite you?” Clyde asked the child as her mother bandaged the hand.

“I saw that cat—” the mother started to say, but the kid screamed, “It didn't
bite
me! It scratched me! Can't you see it scratched me!”

Taping the wound, the woman clutched her own cell phone, ready to call 911 and animal control. Until Clyde
pointed out that if she did that, the authorities would take the cat away, and he, Clyde, wouldn't be able to give her the five hundred dollars he had intended, to cover her inconvenience. He told her Joe had had his rabies shots. He gave her their vet's name and address and, of course, his own address. When the woman stopped shouting, to accept the money and to sign a release that Clyde hastily wrote out on a scrap of paper, Ryan turned her attention to Joe, taking him in her arms.

“Does this mean a lawsuit?” Joe had asked her when they were alone, slipping into the passenger side of the truck.

“I doubt it. But between Dad, Max, and Dallas, we'll come up with an unbeatable lawyer if we need to. Personally,” she said, grinning, “I think she'll drop it. Maybe try to hit us up for more money later.” She looked deep into Joe's eyes. “Clyde and I aren't worried. Neither should you be.”

Clyde slid into the driver's seat, cutting her a look, but said nothing. Heading home, Ryan kept telling Joe over and over, “It's all right.” Holding him close, looking down into his worried face. “It's all right, Joe. You didn't hurt the little brat. We have pictures. Don't sweat it.”

Joe had listened, hiding a smile, as Clyde explained to the woman the many steps she would have to go through if she sued him, the forms she would have to fill out, the time she would have to spend with an attorney, and in court, and the probable cost of an attorney. This, and the whining of her restless kids who were hungry and had to pee and wanted to go home, had at last induced her to accept the money, load up her unruly family, and leave the three of them in peace.

One thing for sure, Joe thought, purring against
Ryan. He never wanted to see the San Jose airport again. Not in all his nine lives. For a while there, he'd thought if he didn't starve in that oversize concrete crypt or get run over by some hurrying driver racing to catch a plane, he
would
be picked up by animal control, imprisoned behind bars for maybe the rest of a very short life.

Now, Ryan's concern went a long way toward dispelling that icy fear of abandonment. And as the three of them hit the freeway, heading home, he snuggled down in her lap, smugly comfortable, filled once more with macho confidence.

M
UCH EARLIER
that evening, Dulcie had stood on the roof of Clyde's house watching the red pickup pull out of the drive, watching Clyde and Ryan head for San Jose.
They didn't want me! Clyde and Ryan didn't want me
. She had been left behind. She was hurt, she was worried about Joe, and she was mad as hell.
Where else should I be when Joe's in danger?

“Please, Dulcie,” Ryan had said, “Rock's so upset and nervous. When I'm upset, he gets like this. I'll have to shut him in the house so he won't try to climb out of the patio and follow us, but…Please stay with him until he calms down. A Weimaraner can tear a whole house to pieces when he's frantic. Please, stay for a while. Later, when he settles down, if you go somewhere, please come back and check on him. Or call Charlie.”

She knew they were trying to keep
her
out of trouble, that they didn't know what kind of danger they were heading into. But when Ryan asked like that, what else could
she do? And Rock
was
upset, he was a basket case, pacing and panting and pawing at the doors.

Who would guess that a big strong dog like Rock could get so undone, could be so sensitive to Ryan's distress? Pacing nervously from room to room, he reared up to peer out the windows and to paw at them until Dulcie backed him away, hissing at him.

“Sit, Rock!” the tabby told him. “Sit, now!”

Rock sat, with that puzzled look he got when any of the three cats gave him a command. Dulcie kept talking and talking to him, to calm him. She'd seen him upset before, when Ryan was stressed over a job, but never this bad. The Weimaraner's sensitivity to human feelings showed his intelligence, but it made him a challenge to live with. Rock would never be a phlegmatic house dog who easily rolled with the punches.

But talking to him helped. He was always attentive when she or Joe or Kit spoke to him, he had never gotten over his amazement at the wonderful talking cats. At last she got him to lie down on the rug, and she stretched out close to him.

“They'll be back soon, Rock. It's all right, everything's all right.”

He turned to nose at her; he was still shivering. Could he be upset not only because Ryan and Clyde were distressed, but because of some elusive canine sensitivity that told him Joe was in trouble? No human really knew the extent of an animal's perceptions.
She
could tell animal researchers a number of stories they'd find hard to believe.

Rock was still for a while, but then he rose nervously again, heading for the kitchen. He pushed and pawed at the locked doggy door, then looked at Dulcie angrily, as
if she was the one who had locked it. She tried to get him to eat some kibble, but he turned his face away. At last he headed back to the living room, gave a sigh of deep resignation, climbed into Joe's ragged easy chair, and curled up tight, his nose hidden in his flank.

Dulcie didn't know whether to laugh at his dramatics or lick the big dog's face. Leaping into the chair beside him, she curled up in a little circle against his side, and began to purr to him; but worry about Joe ate at them both.

When at last Rock slept, snoring, worn out from his concern, she slipped down carefully, silently, and left him.
Just for half an hour
, she thought.
Just for a little while.

Padding up the stairs, she sailed from the desktop to a rafter and quietly pushed out through Joe's cat door. And she headed over the rooftops, galloping across the village toward the Gibbs condo, her mind on a possible laptop and printer, on the source of that second anonymous note left at the back door of the station.

Landing on the roof of the complex, she dropped down to Gibbs's terrace, and peered in. Why waste the perfect time to toss the place, with Gibbs an hour's drive away, hopefully detained by the law.

Nothing moved in there. No lights. The TV dark and silent. She could hear no sound. She had the place to herself, and she had plenty of time for a thorough search. Sliding the screen back, she wondered if they'd been in too much of a hurry to secure the door.

No such luck. The glass slider was locked tight.

There were three windows facing the condo's terrace. Leaping up, clinging to the sills with stubborn claws, she found all three screens locked, and she could see that the
locks on the windows were engaged. Going over the roof to the front door, near the stairs, she found that locked, too.

The kitchen had one window, which was on the outside wall, two stories above the street and with no roof access. A thorny bougainvillea vine clung to that two-story wall, but it was a five-foot leap from this landing onto the vine. If she missed, it would be a straight drop, two stories to the sidewalk.

She crouched, made the leap. Was scrambling through the bougainvillea toward the kitchen window, hoping they hadn't bothered to lock this one, when a squad car pulled to the curb two floors below.

Peering down through the leaves and red blossoms, she watched Juana Davis step out, tucking a folded paper into her uniform pocket.
Could that be a warrant?
Dulcie thought with excitement.
She's been to the judge already?
Well, Davis wasted no time. Maybe Ray and Ryder's hasty departure, plus the body at the ruins, had given her enough to request a search warrant.

Clawing her way back through the bougainvillea, away from the window, Dulcie managed to leap back to the landing, where she crouched behind a small potted tree, waiting for Juana, waiting to slip inside behind her.

Coming up the stairs, Juana used a key with a large white tag that, Dulcie supposed, she'd gotten from the landlord. As she pushed the door open, Dulcie made a fast dash…She got only as far as Juana's heels when Juana turned, closed the door in her face, and stood looking down at her. Dulcie didn't know if she'd made some tiny sound, or if Juana had felt a change in the air current behind her
stockinged legs. The tabby stood frozen, staring up at her. Did Davis have to be so perceptive?

Juana looked at her for a long time, her dark brown eyes as unreadable as if she were studying the face of a shackled felon. Dulcie tried to look innocent. She tried her sweet cat smile, and knew she looked nervous and guilty.

But guilty of what? Juana didn't know why she was here. As good a detective as Juana Davis was, she didn't have a clue on this one. Boldly Dulcie rubbed against her ankles, purring as hard as she could manage.

“Dulcie, what are you doing here?”

Dulcie preened and purred.

“You were on the roofs, and you saw me?” Juana said quietly, the way she would talk to any animal. “Well, the roofs are a good place for cats. No cars, no dogs, nothing to bother you—but I don't want you following me inside. If you got lost among the furniture, and got locked in…” She looked deep into Dulcie's eyes. “I wish you could understand. You mustn't go into strange houses, you could starve to death before anyone knew you were there. You go on, now. Go chase a mouse.” Turning, she slipped inside and closed the door.

So much for that,
Dulcie thought, scrambling up the potted tree to the roof. She felt like a rookie who wanted to go on a case and instead was sent to direct traffic.

But if there was a computer in there, or any kind of evidence, Juana would find it. And instead of her planned break-and-enter, she headed back to Clyde's house to babysit a hundred-pound Weimaraner—and to worry about Joe. To wait nervously for a call from Clyde and Ryan to find out if they'd found him and if he was all right.